


Your Own Battle

by ChainSmokesPens



Category: Original Work
Genre: Flash Fic, Veterans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2020-12-30
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28430667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChainSmokesPens/pseuds/ChainSmokesPens
Summary: Prompt: [WP] As the oldest of the tribe you must explain to the younglings what the final war was like.





	Your Own Battle

I couldn’t focus on the president’s speech. Even if I could, I wouldn’t have cared anyway. The battery at the other end of the stage, with its neon blue radiance and near-imperceptible hum, had secured my attention. Up until:

“And now, the Cobalt Eagle, the Hero of the Cloudtrench Massacre, and my distinguished father, Flavius Chisholm!”

When those words left Gregor’s Mouth I was amazed, in that second, how grateful I was that I wouldn’t be joining Catherine in Paradise, sipping martinis on a loveseat made of the finest clouds the angels could fabricate. It’d break her heart to know she raised such a hollow piece of shit.

The cheers and applause of the audience shook everything around me. And as my daughter, Samantha, rolled me out onto the stage, the roaring became painful. I could feel the bones in my arms vibrating, and when I turned to the flashing cameras, I was back in the sky. My sagged skin tightened, goosebumps crawling along my upper arms, and what hairs I had left—mostly on my body, the stress took the last of my pompadour two years earlier—stood at attention. There was darkness and thunder and lightning. The vultures howled as they tore my comrades from the skies. In the dark, it was easier to tell who’d died. Whether their eyes shone blue, violet, green, or red, the light always faded at death. Like watching the lights of a Christmas tree die, and seeing the lightbulbs plummet thousands of feet.

The hum of the battery continued.

Sweet Samantha pushed up to no less than two dozen microphones, each shortened so that I could see above them. In spite of my declining vision, I focused the best I could over the crowd.

In the front row stood McCullough’s widow; I recognized her from the pictures her husband always shoved in the faces of the guys at camp. I didn’t know why he felt so secure showing off his wife to the rest of us while he only ever showed us the rest of his family once. That’s how I recognized the man with his arm around the widow McCullough’s waist as his younger brother.

I reached into the breast pocket of my uppermost coat, looking for the notecards of the speech my son had prepared for me. It’s funny. In spite of having never met or engaged in correspondence with me while I was away, he claimed to know exactly what I, a hero of the Cloudtrench Massacre, should say.

Me, the fifty-year-old veteran who’d been sold on the dignity of fighting for your tribe before my formal education was even finished. Who now sat on stage, sweltering beneath a dense fur coat adorned with metals of all colors. Who was too wracked be the repercussions of our people’s magic to feed, bathe, dress, or wipe myself any more.

The hum of the battery continued.

I searched in the breast pocket of my second coat and found the speech. At the sight of the little white notecards, the crowd started cheering again. Thankfully, in spite of ow war ad ravaged my body, I had retained enough muscle strength to roll my eyes.

I scanned the crowd again and my eyes locked with a man near the front. He had to have been my age, though you probably couldn’t guess it. He was overweight, no doubt fat from the comfort of the sacrifices of other men, of braver men, of me and my comrades. As I sat there, my giant coats concealing my mummified body, I wasn’t really jealous. Having had my stomach scratched out by a vulture, I found that it was harder for me to put on weight.

I tried to begin speaking, but rasped, then coughed, then nearly choked on my saliva before sweet Samantha came to pat my back. After twenty more seconds of me hacking into the microphones, admittedly putting on a bit of a performance, I made it clear that I was fine.

The crowd started cheering again.

The hum of the battery continued. I turned to face it this time, made eye contact with something, and returned to my notecards. It was too late. Now I could truly hear it.

The words of the speech were exactly the vapid shlock you’d expect from a man who wanted to use his estranged war veteran father’s reputation to help secure himself a fourth term as president. I often wondered if the boy was mine. Samantha, on the other hand, definitely wasn’t. Anyone with two eyes and half a brain could see that.

Ricky had half a brain. Not that he needed the other half. Some twisted ritual cost him a half of what was behind his eyes, but it let him cast the most amazing spells. Shapeshifting into demons, controlling shadows, using fear as sustenance, all of it was pretty impressive. He just had to make sure to perform a ritual of gratitude to whatever profaned deity gave him his powers every midnight.

We pushed Ricky to get drunk with us one night. He passed out five minutes early. He was a husk when we woke up in the morning.

I wondered if he’d forgiven me. Looking over at the battery—looking into the battery, into its light—I could see him. “No” his mouth seemed to say. Maybe that wasn’t directed to me. Maybe he was having a bad time.

It sounded like a bad time.

I found a boy, no older than twelve, holding a flag on a pole nearly twice his height. The Colors of Liberation would look nice being waved energetically, rather than perched against his shoulder while the little brat stared blankly at his phone.

Genevieve had a son. She would wake us up every morning with a big, wet kiss on the cheek. Sometimes the guys would stay in bed so that she’d come by and kiss them. It was hilarious when the general would come by to wake them up instead.

She propositioned me one night. I refused, being married. But, as I read the words written by the salesman that was my son Gregor and the beloved daughter who wasn’t mine gingerly rested her hands on my shoulders, I wished that I had accepted her offer.

The way I’d rehearsed the speech, I didn’t study the words. The words were crap anyway. Instead, I’d focused on delivery.

“You can sell anything,” Johannes had said to me, “if you say it the right way. It don’t even have to say the right thing, just say it the right way.”

Johannes said that pretty early on. When I thought about it later, I’d realized that Johannes was probably the first one to realize that we were being lied to. The promises of victory were never met, since a peace treaty was signed. The promises of distinction were pretty unimportant, considering the ninety-five percent fatality rate. The levels of safety in the spells we used, the frequency at which letters were delivered, the assurance that no civilians would be swept into this conflict, all of it was bullshit.

All except one thing.

I couldn’t help but turn to the battery again, Johannes’ face swirling in a pool of our comrade’s essences. The reward of being an icon in this life and the next was the only true thing we were told. And the misery on his face made it clear it wasn’t worth it.

At this point, I stopped. Stopped reading the speech. Stopped focusing on the audience. Stopped trying to support my son.

I just stared at the battery. Stared past the blue light.

Ricky swam bask to the surface, half of his head missing. Drama queen.

McCulloch’s empty eye sockets looked like the were melting, crying. He couldn’t turn away from his wife in the audience.

Genevieve was there, despite having returned home after the war. I don’t know if her soul was just drawn to the battery or if they had dug her up and shoved her in there, but there she was.

The general.

The civilians.

I jumped when Samantha tapped me on the shoulder. I looked over the crowd again.

They were silent.

I saw a small family of refugees. The father, the mother, and the son stood, stone-faced, arms folded across their chests.

Heat spread from my chest outwards. Muscles I hadn’t used in years twitched to life. I planted my palms firmly in the sides of my chair and pushed. The crowd chanted my name. I could feel my daughter’s worry pushing into my back. I could feel the gear’s in my son’s head turn as he plotted how to spin this in his favor. Things inside of me cracked and grinded and popped out of place. I could taste my sweat dripping through my grit teeth.

I stood.

And before the crowd could erupt cheers, I raised a hand to silence them. I pulled my coats from my body. Like stepping out of a hot shower, I was freezing. I dropped them to the floor.

There was gasping. And there were murmurs. I stood before them, the promise of the last generation. I stood there for an hour. Emaciated, scarred, lumps where there shouldn’t be, a series of holes along my right side, the terrible tattoo I’d let Levi carve into me that ended up getting infected, I stood there and told them the painful, terrifying story behind each scar.

When I finished I looked to my friends. Their swimming has stopped and their faces were pressed against the side of the battery. The battery that was to power a great machine and protect these weak, soft people we had sacrificed so much for. Our countrymen.

For another first in many years, I spoke without a rasp. My voice was firm, deep, and sonorous. I hadn’t heard it in so long that I’d forgotten it was possible. Like rediscovering a talent you’d cast to the side.

**Author's Note:**

> The first prompt I wrote. Feels like the first prompt I wrote.


End file.
